Please Contribute to Lon Burnam's Legal Defense Fund

[MagickMuffin]

State Rep. Lon Burnam has served Tarrant County for 17 years. The first two excerpts below are emails and the last one is from the Startlegram.

We need Lon Burnam in office. He has been very beneficial to Fort Worth and very supportive of Tarrant County candidates running for office and he is a progressive Democrat. Now it's our turn to be supportive of State Rep. Lon Burnam.

Thank you for your many years of support. As many of you already know, after 17 years in the Texas Legislature, my campaign for re-election for a 10th term as your State Representative came up short by just 111 votes. The last minute influx of pro-charter school money into my opponent’s campaign through the front group Education Reform Now —run by Wall Street hedge fund managers—was the silver bullet that ended my tenure of staunch support for our public schools and quality education for our children.

Every Session I spent as your Representative we made great strides towards equality and justice for the people of District 90 and Texas. Now more than ever, it is important that we keep a watchful eye on the Texas Legislature. Education Reform Now has a specific agenda—to help private companies make profit by redirecting public education dollars to charter schools. With so many billions of dollars at stake here…what they put into elections in Texas is chump change.

Because of the over $35,000 Education Reform Now poured into the campaign against me, my opponent will receive significant pressure to vote to undermine our public schools by redirecting the money towards charters.

But I am not finished and I will be spending the coming months holding Romero, Education Reform Now and other special economic interests accountable.

Please help me do this by making a contribution to my severely depleted political account so I can bird-dog and raise the alarm about those who see this time as an opportunity to dismantle our public education system.

Beyond that, rest assured that I do not intend to "go quietly into the night". I have ten months left as a state representative and I intend to use every bit of it. Even after I leave office, I will continue to fight for public education, healthcare for all, civil rights and environmental justice as a public citizen.

It has been my distinct honor to serve in the Texas House, even when the Texas House wasn't always honorable. Thanks for the memories, you'll be hearing from me again soon. You can count on it.

Lon Burnam

Many of you already know that last Monday I filed a lawsuit to overturn the results of the March 4th primary election after learning of illegal vote harvesting and other election irregularities. As you may know, the initial race results were very close, so even a limited number of illegitimate votes can change the outcome.

After receiving reports of these illegal acts and reviewing my options, I assembled a great legal team including Buck Wood, Art Brender and Ross Peavey, and filed suit. Our first hearing is this Friday, April 4th, when we will be filing the initial subpoenas for the documents that will prove these allegations. This suit is moving very quickly, and so are my legal bills.

I am grateful for the show of support from my friends in the words of encouragement and the 150 people who have contributed to my legal fund so that we can see this lawsuit through.

However, we have not yet raised enough money to complete the lawsuit, and without it I may have to concede.

It is hard to know what to suggest as a giving level, but one clever friend gave $111, (the number of votes separating the candidates in the race). Other friends have given much more and many gave what they could. I am not a wealthy man and I have no corporate backers footing the bill, so I am depending on you.

Please help me in this fight, not just to return me to office but to also protect the integrity of the Democratic primaries in Tarrant County, so that they do not head down the troubled path we have seen others take. Please contribute to my legal defense fund here.

Best regards,
Lon Burnam

P.S. Not everyone is on my email list, so please forward this to any of your progressive friends via email or Facebook who might be interested in supporting this effort.

P.P.S. I have said this before but judging from some of the comments I have seen from those I have never counted as friends, I need to say it again: These allegations have absolutely nothing to do with anything that could be addressed with a Voter ID law. Anyone who says that is either profoundly dishonest or profoundly confused about election law. You can tell them I said that.

State Rep. Lon Burnam filed such a suit Monday against businessman Ramon Romero Jr., the man who bested him by 111 votes in the March 4 Democratic primary for Fort Worth’s District 90 House seat.

Given what’s at stake — Burnam asks a district court to declare him the winner rather than Romero or to order a new election — the suit should receive expedited treatment from the court and everyone involved.

No one gains from holding the election outcome in legal limbo.

Burnam says in the suit, filed by attorneys Randal Buck Wood of Austin and Art Brender of Fort Worth, that he has “information and belief” that canvassers working on behalf of Romero improperly submitted applications for more than 180 vote-by-mail ballots.

The canvassers asked potential voters to fill out a vote-by-mail application on an iPad and sign it electronically, the suit says, adding, “These signatures would be downloaded as a printed application and sent to the election officials so that a ballot could be mailed to the voter.”

Burnam’s core claim is that Texas election law makes no provision for using electronic devices in that way. He submitted as evidence emails to his office from the Texas secretary of state’s office saying any such technology “must be proven to work within the legal procedures set forth in the Election Code, and approved by the Legislature.”

To date, no such approval has been issued, the email says.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/03/25/5679967/burnam-suit-puts-election-in-legal.html#storylink=cpy

[broiles]

1. I already have. With pleasure.

[MagickMuffin]

2. Thank You, broiles

Lon is such a wonderfully wild and crazy guy, with a huge liberal heart. We need more people like him in our party!